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Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Gov. Tim Walz directly addressed their position on transgender rights in media interviews this week — the first time their campaign has done so, with just over two weeks remaining until the 2024 presidential election.
By far the strongest pro-trans message came from Walz in an interview with author Glennon Doyle and former soccer star Abby Wambach on their podcast We Can Do Hard Things, released on October 17. In the interview, Walz discussed his previous record on LGBTQ+ rights, including supporting same-sex marriage rights in the mid-2000s. When asked by Doyle what a Harris/Walz administration would do “to protect our queer kids today,” Walz lauded Harris’ own record on marriage equality before turning the topic to trans people and conservative attacks on their rights.
“We see it now, you know that the hate is transferred to the trans community. [Republicans] see that as an opportunity,” Walz said, before directly calling out the recent blitz of anti-trans political campaign ads “If you’re watching any sporting events right now, you see that the closing arguments for Donald Trump is to demonize a group of people for being who they are. We’re out there trying to make the case that access to healthcare, and a clean environment and manufacturing jobs, and keeping your local hospital open — those are things that people are really concerned about.” Walz went on to say that Republicans are “running millions of dollars of ads demonizing folks that are just trying to live their lives,” referring to the more than $65 million conservatives have spent on such ads since August.
Walz then called on family members of older voters, who he said “want to do right” but “don’t really understand” trans identities, to step up and counter anti-trans misinformation from the GOP. “It feels to me like that goes a long ways. We’re winning public opinion and we need to continue to do that,” Walz said. “But [...] we need to also make sure that the power that protects these rights is in place too.”
Walz’s comments seem to be the first time either candidate has brought up trans issues in a public forum without being pushed to do so, two months into a campaign that has frequently invoked LGBTQ+ rights in general but provided few specifics on trans rights in particular.
Earlier this week, Harris did address her stance on trans prisoners’ access to gender-affirming care in a contentious interview on Fox News that aired Wednesday, a day before Walz’s podcast appearance was released. The Trump campaign has hammered Harris for supporting prisoners’ rights to pursue gender-affirming surgeries during her 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, and footage of Harris affirming her stance to the National Center for Trans Equality at the time is now the focal point of Trump’s “Kamala Is for They/Them” ad campaign.
When Fox News host Bret Baier asked Harris if her position on trans prisoners’ rights remained the same, Harris replied that failing to make such medical care available would be illegal. “I would follow the law, just as Donald Trump did,” Harris said, adding that Trump is “trying to create a sense of fear in the voters, because he actually has no plan in this election that is about focusing on the needs of the American people.”
Those remarks appear to be the first time Harris has directly clarified her position on a trans-specific issue since her campaign began in July. Her comments came on the heels of intense online backlash from trans advocates and voters, who have accused Harris of failing to adequately respond to anti-trans Republican rhetoric. An October 16 post from the official Harris account @KamalaHQ (posted hours prior to her Fox interview) further inflamed the backlash; many perceived the post’s message as a political “gotcha” signaling Harris’ unwillingness to fully engage Trump on trans rights rather than making her own position clear.
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Harris’ subsequent statement on Fox — that federal law requires medical gender-affirming procedures be made available to those who need them — is one shared by ACLU attorney Chase Strangio, who told Them in September that denying such care to prisoners violates the Constitution.
“Courts have consistently held that blanket denials of medical care, including medical treatment related to gender dysphoria, are unconstitutional,” Strangio observed. “The government, once it confines someone against their will, cannot deliberately withhold needed medical care.
“This basic constitutional requirement is being treated as controversial because the media and state and federal lawmakers have so effectively demonized transgender people and immigrants that the idea that the Constitution would protect us is itself seen as something bordering on a joke,” Strangio added.
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